IGS Classic Collection - Switch

[Marc]

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2023/ ... -to-switch

Only ever dabbled with these, great news.

[NeoStrayCat]

Yeah, the main attraction in this collection is Martial Masters, which have character sprites being very similar to SF III and Garou:MotW, and also Demon Front with subtle hints of Metal Slug here and there.

[Air Master Burst]

For me the main attraction is Oriental Legend; Shadow Over Mystara is one of my favorite games and Oriental Legend is supposed to borrow a lot from it. Knights of Valour looks pretty cool too, while I have zero interest in Martial Masters.

Demon Front looks like it might have potential, although the health bar and level-up system are red flags.

[Sumez]

Now people have no excuse not to play Demon Front

the health bar and level-up system are red flags.

health bar?!

[Air Master Burst]

Now people have no excuse not to play Demon Front

the health bar and level-up system are red flags.

health bar?!

I dunno, I just assumed that red bar with the heart on the HUD was a life bar? I've never played it.

[hamfighterx]

Bought this instantly. The emulation feels OK, but extremely bare bones. No graphical options like scanline filters (you can change screen size, that's it), it appears there is a graphical filter automatically applied that can't be turned off. Slightly smudgy, not the worst I've seen though. Someone else would have to confirm stuff like how much input lag there is. Seeing first ever console ports of games like Martial Masters and the KoV games is pretty cool though!

And the potentially more interesting thing is whether IGS might have the ability to do further releases that include any of the shooters from the PGM hardware. Maybe IGS has the rights to publish DoDonPachi II: Bee Storm? Or maybe Espgaluda shows up???

Not too excited for a worse port of DDP DOJ/Black Label or Ketsui, since the ShotTriggers releases exist. Though I guess to be fair, those aren't on Switch so maybe they could be an alternative for Switch-only console players.

[Sima Tuna]

I've heard claims that the aspect ratio can't be set back to default (it's stretched in the collection), the sound is incorrect (poor quality) and there is additional input lag. No good sources for this (just forum comments from other forums/youtube) but let the buyer beware I guess.

I would buy this if the price point were slightly lower. But I still regret buying Johnny Turbo Arcade Night Slashers and am loathe to spend even a single dollar on piss-poor collections of that sort. So I'm opting to wait until we have more information on the emulation quality.

[hamfighterx]

Yeah if the Johnny Turbos games bother you, the quality of emulation on offer here is similar. I don’t particularly mind $30 for 8 games (most/all of which have never seen console ports) when I just want to casually play through the beat ‘em ups a couple times, but these aren’t reference quality ports with all the bells and whistles or anything. Good enough for my purposes though.

It’s a very barebones presentation. I’m not familiar enough with the games to judge the sound quality, or have any lag ruin the feel for me. YMMV if you’re more sensitive to lag or know the games inside and out, but the controls felt sufficiently responsive to me. Music does sound kinda tinny and low quality, I didn’t know if that’s a PGM thing or actual emulation issues.

The display options I can confirm are not great. Stretched display only and a forced graphical filter (I think? Looks similar to the level of smudge you get from the default filter on most of Hamster’s Arcade Archives games) with no option to turn that off. Screen size options are just a stretched full screen mode (which honestly doesn’t look bad to me, but not the original 448x224 PGM resolution), 90% size, and 70% size.

Feels like they could improve things with a future patch, which would not be shocking.

[Ghegs]

I'm not a stickler for emulation quality, but stretched image is a turn-off. But I do admit that looking at a video of the compilation, if somebody told me that's what the games are supposed to look like, I'd probably believe them. It's not as jarring as stretching a NES game's image, for example. Still, it's a prime candidate for a patch to fix, though weird that it wasn't correct to begin with.

[SuperPang]

the sound is incorrect (poor quality)

Haven't bought this but the audio on PGM is garbage anyway. Martial Masters audio sounds like it has slowdown ffs.

Don't know what wizardry Cave and Namiki pulled off to improve it.

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

Forced stretch is an exclusion criterion for me as well - what were they thinking? It's my impression that nobody expected this collection, so it's not like they had to rush it out...

Let's hope Oriental Legend 2 will be released at some point in the future!

Demon Front: I dunno, I just assumed that red bar with the heart on the HUD was a life bar? I've never played it.

Don't worry, it's a classic one hit will kill you-game, the bar is a combo bar (which I've always ignored).

[XoPachi]

I've actually never heard of IGS beyond DDP2.
Obviously I knew they made games, but I never knew what was under them. Did they make any other STG's? I don't care for fighters/beat em ups.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

On the Poly Game Master 2 arcade motherboard (PGM2) manufactured by IGS that superceded the original PGM motherboard, Dodonpachi DOJ was released for the Chinese arcade market. It was an official Cave Co. Ltd. release indeed.

You can get PGM carts of DDP-DOJ (in both "White Label" & "Black Label" variants), Ketsui and ESPgaluda as well on the cheap -- is a much more affordable way to play all three PGM-based Cave arcade stgs (rather than spend a fortune looking for the highly desired but uber-expensive original single layered Cave/IGS jamma based pcbs of the same names nowadays). Your best bet is to check on ebay for 'em.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[ChurchOfSolipsism]

You can get PGM carts of DDP-DOJ (in both "White Label" & "Black Label" variants), Ketsui and ESPgaluda as well on the cheap

Some people on this board stated that these homemade conversions would crap out soon - I've always wondered if there's any truth to this, can anyone owning these for a while weigh in on this?

[null1024]

the sound is incorrect (poor quality)

Haven't bought this but the audio on PGM is garbage anyway. Martial Masters audio sounds like it has slowdown ffs.

Don't know what wizardry Cave and Namiki pulled off to improve it.

I'd just chalk it up to them actually trying. I'm still reminded of how some [possibly most or all] the music in Bee Storm is just outright stolen, basically just random .MOD files off the internet with edits.
The audio hardware is a a pretty decent sampler chip, the kind you'd see on a mid 90s PC MIDI card.